Minneapolis police are looking into the possibility that a pair of recent homicide victims were targeted for divulging information about two other local killings.
Detectives are investigating whether Aaron J. Williams was killed May 30 because he gave police information about the shooting of 26-year-old Iesha L. Wiley outside of a north Minneapolis strip mall two weeks before.
That revelation provides a possible motive for his killing, according to three people familiar with the case. Another theory that investigators are considering is that Williams was killed after a drug deal went bad.
Williams, 22, was found shot in a parked van in north Minneapolis' Jordan neighborhood last week. He died two hours later at North Memorial Medical Center.
Witnesses described a man hopping out of a "white truck," identified as a Jeep in scanner reports, and getting into Williams' blue economy van moments before the shooting. The suspect then fled the scene in the white truck, which was driven by another man.
No arrests have been announced in that slaying.
Police are looking into whether Wiley's death was connected to a 2016 homicide on the city's North Side.
For months, detectives had suspected three Young N' Thuggin' gang members in the death of Crystal Collins, a mother of three who was gunned down in broad daylight last July on the corner of 30th and Newton avenues.
